Provided herein are various devices and methods that measure the pressure or force exerted against a surface. One application of the devices and methods provided herein are for surgical procedures that address urinary incontinence, including female stress incontinence.
Urinary incontinence occurs in both men and women and is typically associated with unwanted urinary leakage that occurs with abdominal pressure increases such as from sneezing, coughing, hiccupping, exercise, laughing and other such stimuli. Interventions to address urinary incontinence include surgical procedures. Many procedures involve a surgical injection and placement of a material to mechanically support the bladder neck or the urethra.
Some studies suggest it is beneficial to use pressure-sensing catheters to simultaneously measure a patient's vesicle and urethral pressure (see, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 6,743,165). Common procedures for surgically alleviating stress incontinence relate to supporting the urethra by employing materials to physically support the urethra, such as sutures, straps, slings or other artificial structures that loop around the urethra. Those materials may be attached to adjacent tissue, bone, ligament or other support material. For example, a sling may be looped around the urethra and connected to the pubis and around the obturator foramen. The problem with those interventions, however, is that the actual pressure exerted on the urethra is unknown.